Quantum Man: Richard Feynman

There was an exceptional lecture about Richard Feynman given at CERN a few days ago that was shared by a colleague and wanted to repost here.

From the CERN document server: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1386327

Lawrence Krauss gives a very nice overview of some of the things that I think made Feynmann exceptional both in his physics and in being a human in a field of giants (physics).

Like most people coming up after this exceptional man I too was influenced by his writings and his legend and as I make the transition from graduate student to Post-doc I can only hope to have my path as rich as Feynman's was!

Cosmology with Prof Susskind from Standford

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

I found this great video on a cosmology lecture given by Prof Leonard Susskind that is one in a 4 part series of Cosmology lectures. 

I think the video is very good and the Q&A session at the very beginning is a great chance to hear some of the most common questions when it comes to Cosmology explained clearly and with a lay-man in mind!

Enjoy

DZero Doesn't see the same excess as CDF!

So the physics world is all a buzz with the reported excess in the W+2 Jet channel reported by CDF.

The graph here shows the most recent result released by CDF in the W+ 2 Jet channel for 7.3 fb-1 and shows a clear (and growing) excess in the invariant mass range around 150 GeV. The community has been buzzing with speculation and ideas as to what this phenomenon could be. From mis-modeling to Technicolor (a new model of physics) the result isn't really clear. But something seems to be really there.

The really exciting thing is that CDF's sister experiment at the Tevatron, DZero, has publicly released their findings in the same channel today and they don't seem to see anything. (See the public release by Fermilab here).

So what does it all mean? Well clearly something is happening here. The CDF result has been checked and double checked from within the collaboration (that is really the only way such a result could ever see the light of day) and now you have an independent check by another experiment on the same data and they don't see anything! The fury of discussion as to whether DZero and CDF are doing identical things will launch as well as much debate as to what it means and how to proceed.

To me this is where physics is really interesting! Methods of analysis and meaning and understanding will be hotly debated. DZero will be giving a seminar talk today at 4pm and is webcasted here.

For sure what is to come will be what makes science great. Checks, cross-checks, argument, and ultimately (and probably after many sleepless nights and hurt ego's) agreement to what causes such deviations.

Get Excited!

Explanation of hints at new physics from CDF

There is a good summary article in the New York Times (see link here) that talks about the exciting new physics that will be reported today from CDF (Collider Detection at Fermilab).

I spoke about this in my previous blog post (see link here) and the talk is being given today at Fermilab.

The basic summary, "If it is real, than it is really exciting!" says it best.

Imporant new result from CDF

So there is a really exciting Wine and Cheese Seminar scheduled for Wednesday April 6th at Fermilab to talk about an exciting result being reported in the "W+2 Jet " channel.

You will be able to find the talk here: http://theory.fnal.gov/jetp/

IF streaming video is available for this talk you will find it here: http://vms-db-srv.fnal.gov/fmi/xsl/VMS_Site_2/000Return/video/r_live.xsl


For those of you on the fringe of particle physics this will be talk about a new result from the collaboration about production of a fundamental particle known as a W boson. This particle is one of the fundamental messenger particles in the Standard Model. A "Jet" is just a deposit of energy found in our detector coming from the collision.

What is exciting about this somehow boring sounding title is that there could be evidence for all kind of interesting things when looking at what is thought to be "well understood".

No matter how you look at it, this result was important enough to schedule a special seminar...so lots of eyes in the physics world will be looking at it

Recontres de Morinond

I thought I would share a good link to find all the current talks being given in the particle physics world from the conference Recontres de Moriond.

The link to the talks is here

As said on the website the purpose of this conference is:

The purpose of the Rencontres de Moriond is to discuss recent findings and new ideas in physics in a pleasant, relaxed and convivial atmosphere. The meeting is intended to promote fruitful collaboration between various communities and institutes by bringing together a small number of scientists in inspiring surroundings.

Of course being in the Italian alps helps the relaxing and convivial atmosphere, I am sure. 

While I'm not personally giving any talks at this conference many people I know are and you can expect some big name talks coming from the Tevatron. 

LHC to Run Through 2012

An important announcement was made today by CERN indicating that the Large Hadron Collider will run through 2012 choosing to put off a previously long term shutdown to repair known problems that exist with the magnets.

This announcement comes on the heels of the announcement that the Tevatron will shutdown sometime (September?) of this year thus ending the High Energy Physics program at Fermilab.

Part of the announcement I found interesting was:

“With the LHC running so well in 2010, and further improvements in performance expected, there’s a real chance that exciting new physics may be within our sights by the end of the year,” Said CERN’s Research Director, Sergio Bertolucci. “For example, if nature is kind to us and the lightest supersymmetric particle, or the Higgs boson, is within reach of the LHC’s current energy, the data we expect to collect by the end of 2012 will put them within our grasp."

That is of course providing the Higgs isn't light as has been suspected by many. If nature chose that as the possibility then really the Tevatron was the right game to be playing...but only time will tell.

Granted I am a little sore still about the Tevatron not getting the funding I think it needs to finish on the strong note it deserves...but there are really a lot of physics questions left.

Additionally, while the LHC was showing major improvements in the last weeks of Proton/Proton collisions (nearly doubling their data set in one week) particle accelerators are tricky things and previous results does not predict future performance. There is still a lot of tuning to do before this machine is ready to do the monumental stuff it promises.

There is a good deal to be optimistic about as was outlined in a talk I attended from CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) given at Fermilab this last week. (See Link Here w/ link to talk to come...)

Tevatron to Shutdown!

As was announced today by the director of Fermilab (see here) there will be no extension to the running of the Tevatron beyond 2011.
As stated:

"The present budgetary climate did not permit DOE to secure the additional funds needed to run the Tevatron for three more years as recommended by the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel."
This marks a very sad day for me to hear that the experiment I am working on and have grown to love will be ending after this year.
It is especially hard to hear considering that this choice is being made (at least publicly) by budgetary considerations and not by the recommendation of the science that drives field.
I'll probably have more to say on this in the coming days...but for now I have a PhD to finish and thought it would be worth while to post briefly on this.

See more related articles here:
From the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/life-and-physics/2011/jan/10/1
From Chicago Buisness: http://beaconnews.suntimes.com/news/3242019-418/tevatron-fermilab-funding-accelerator-energy.html

Super-B Accelerator Moves forward (does the US move back?)

As described in the following press release (see here). The Italian government has confirmed that they will be moving forward on the construction of the high intensity electron/positron collider known as SuperB.

Expected to produce 1000's of B-Mesons and Tau particles every second this will allow physicists to study the very rare decays of these B mesons as well as study CP violation to a much higher degree of accuracy than previously possible.

The U.S. meanwhile is still holding in the background awaiting word if we will even have a say in the future of particle physics. With the awaiting word of the Tevatron extended run (see P5 report recommending the extension of the Tevatron here) and knowing that many of the components for the SuperB will come from the short lived PEP-II experiment at SLAC just reinforces that while the rest of the world is looking forward to the future of science the US is increasingly looking like it playing a "wait and see" game.

At least this physicists may end up having to look for jobs in Europe and add to the potential brain drain (all though in my case a very small drain) facing the US.

LHC sees Lead-Lead Collisions

As many of you know the Large Hadron Collider has switched from colliding proton on proton to using Lead Ions on Lead Ions.

 

A great article from the guardian (found here) describes the type of physics that can be probed from colliding heavy ions at high energy that is often hard to tease out of collisions like proton/proton or proton/anti-proton like the what is done at the LHC and the Tevatron respectively.

This is another really big landmark for the LHC and the next era of particle physics. I can't wait to see what results come from Alice and LHCb with these collisions.

See live event collisions from the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) webpage here

http://cms.web.cern.ch/cms/

LHC is ramping up!!!

There was a great email circulated today about the most recent fill done at the LHC. (A fill is an occurance when they stuff the accelerator full of protons and start circulating them around at near the speed of light to cause them to collide at the detectors)

The short and sweet of it is the technicians and scientists that are in charge of revving up the accelerator are starting to understand their machine better and better which means they can squeeze and pack in more protons, which means more intense beams, which means MORE DATA PER FILL!!!

Now they aren't near there design specifications...but this last fill makes a major stride toward achieving that goal!

----- Original Message -----
From: Rolf Heuer

Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 9:39 AM

Subject: A game-changing fill for the LHC - Une exploitation qui change la donne
pour le LHC

A game-changing fill for the LHC

A long period of machine development paid dividends last night with a game-changing fill in the LHC. As I write this, the fill, which started colliding at 19:00 yesterday evening, has just wound down. Both ATLAS and CMS have posted integrated luminosities of over 680 inverse nanobarns, and the initial luminosity for the fill doubles the previous record at 2´1031cm-2s-1.

But it’s not the records that are important this time – it’s normal that in the
start-up phase of a new machine, records will fall like autumn leaves – what’s
significant here is that the LHC’s performance this fill significantly exceeded some crucial design parameters, opening up the path to much better still to come.

Last night’s fill was the first with 56 bunches arranged in trains of eight bunches
per train. The significance of bunch train running is that we can configure the
orbits such that more bunches collide in the experiments, so even though the number of bunches may not be much higher, the collision rate is. For example, last night’s 56-bunch fill had 47 bunches colliding at ATLAS, CMS and LHCb, with 16 colliding in ALICE, whose needs are lower. This compares to a maximum of 36 colliding bunches out of 48 total before we introduced bunch trains.

A big jump in luminosity was clearly expected in moving to bunch trains and
colliding more bunches. What came as a pleasant surprise is that it was accompanied by an exceptional beam lifetime of 40 hours, and less disruption to the beams caused by packing more protons into a smaller space (in technical terms, the beam-beam tune shift was much less destructive to the beams than anticipated). This result means that the LHC operators have more leeway in operational parameters in the quest for higher luminosity.

The plan for today and the weekend is to run for one more fill with 56 bunches in
trains of eight before moving on to 104 bunches in 13 trains of eight, with 93
bunches colliding in ATLAS and CMS. Ultimately, the LHC will run with 2808 bunches in each beam, so there’s still a long way to go. We’ll get there slowly but surely by adding bunches to each train until the trains meet in a single machine-filling train. That will take time, but for the moment, last night’s fill puts us well on the way to achieving the main objective for 2010: a luminosity of 1032cm-2s-1.

Rolf Heuer

The Tevatron and Run III

Tevatron Accelerator

This is a re-post from my other blog: http://www.quantumdiaries.org/author/jonathan/

There has been a great discussion raging at Fermilab surrounding the recent report given by the Physics Advisory Committee on August 31st. In this report the committee considered the impact of extending the life of the Tevatron through 2014 in what is being called around the lab Run III.

Basically what has been outlined is trying to answer the difficult question of whether or not the immediate physics payout of extending the life of the experiments and most likely doubling the data sets out weighs the potential impact on the future experiments at Fermilab. In addition, the performance of the experiments (CDF & D0) in terms of hardware, man power, and analysis reach have to be considered when viewed in light of the draw for many scientists to move onto other interesting experiments happening at Fermilab (NuMI, Project X, etc…) and elsewhere (CMS, ATLAS, and the like…)

What faces the lab, the director of Fermilab (Pier Oddone), and the scientists that work in the world of particle physics is a really difficult one. What they have to do is look into their crystal balls and ask the questions:

1) With the LHC going into a 15 month shutdown at the end of 2011, what will the data the is already on tape look like and what kind of physics reach will it provide us?

2) With the ever improving performance of the Tevatron and the experiments at Fermilab what is the likelihood of having a discovery with a larger data set (read: Find the Higgs or exclude the Standard Model flavor in the low mass ranges)

3) What does the funding question look like for the other interests of the lab in light of the extended running of the Tevatron? Not to mention the timeline / manpower / and resource availability!

These are just some of the big issues….there are clearly 100’s more that me as a lowly graduate student am probably not even aware of! But from my own perspective I see the PAC report as a great sign! Their conclusion was simple:

The Committee strongly endorses the extension of the Tevatron run for three years during 2011–2014 under either funding scenario presented in the charge. The Committee is aware that the development of the future programs might be severely affected and projects delayed by the Collider run. The Committee recommends that efforts be made to mitigate the effects. While the Tevatron run extension would take advantage of a compelling opportunity, the long-term plans of the Laboratory and of the field, as outlined by the P5 report, should be pursued vigorously.

I was really excited to hear this! As a young researcher on the verge of graduating I saw this recommendation as an opportunity to continue my with a post-doc at Fermilab working at a time in particle physics where the chance of a real discovery (Higgs/SUSY/Beyond Standard Model) is a real possibility and to be able to contribute to the American thrust of physics in the global arena during the shutdown/upgrade of the LHC.

There is no question what the future of high energy physics will be, and that is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN for many years. There is also no denying that Fermilab is looking to the future with the intensity frontier in such experiments like NuMI and Project X. However, we are at a time where the physics possibilities are so great, the timing too perfect, and the reach of our experiments so close, that I think it would be a shame not to extend the run and take this chance to make a major discovery!

Higgs Exclusion that could be extended (or discovery made) in the low mass region still to be explored

I encourage everyone to read the PAC Report and get excited for the potential reach of the Tevatron! Coming back out of our summer shutdown we are already colliding with inital luminosities near 250 nb-1 and delivering 5000 nb-1 per store. There are so many exciting hints and clues in the analysis in the pipeline at CDF that adding more of this quickly accumulating data will help shed light on all the great mysteries.

Recent result from D0 showing hints of new physics to still be understood in the asymmetry of matter and anti-matter

So, when asked: “To run or not to run?” The answer is TO RUN! At least in this humble blogger’s opinion

CMS Luminostiy Online

So for all of you who are from outside of particle physics a little explanation is in order.

When we want to know how much data we are recording in our particle physics experiments we often talk about this in terms of "Luminosity" which has strange units of inverse area and time.
Without giving too much of an explanation this is basically a measure of how many collisions we are having and how much data we are recording.

The CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment currently operating at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at CERN has posted their Luminosity plots online here:

http://cms-service-lumi.web.cern.ch/cms-service-lumi/overview.php

So you can actually see as the improvements in the accelerator and the operation of the detector improve the recorded luminosity and delivered luminosity (recorded being what the detector captures and delivered being what the accelerator pumps through the experiment) increase at nearly a exponential rate!

Not to brag too much but the same plots of the Tevatron at Fermilab can be found here:

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/now/tevlum.html

All I'm saying is our inital Luminosity at the start of a store (when the particles start colliding) is pretty impressive when compared to all the data the LHC has taken so far...but they will catch up!

2010 Hadron Collider Physics Summer School (Live and Streaming)

The fifth annual CERN / Fermilab Hadron Physics summer school is currently going on right now at Fermilab in the Wilson Hall High Rise.

This annual summer school is a great opportunity for young physicists to listen to lectures about the field of high energy physics both experimental and theory. Furthermore, these  lectures are designed to give someone with limited experimental knowledge some real understanding of how these accelerators, detectors, and analysis computing take place in the real world of particle physics

This summer series is going on August 17th - August 20th and is available streaming online:
http://www-visualmedia.fnal.gov/live/2010HCPSS_Live.htm

As well as the slides from the various speakers are publicly available here:
http://indico.fnal.gov/conferenceOtherViews.py?view=standard&confId=3532

So even if you aren't able to be at Fermilab for these lectures you can still enjoy them. Much thanks to the Fermilab visual media services!

D0 sees new physics!!!

So some big news from Fermilab was just recently released. (See press release here). The interesting thing here is that the result gives an indication of why we observe an abundance of matter over anti-matter in the universe. In one interpretation (and this might be a bit of an over-reach) this could be experimental evidence for physics that isn't explained in our current best theory of particle physics (The Standard Model) and help explain the existence of everything we observe in the universe!

With such big claims I think this result deserves a little bit more of an explanation. So one of the big mysteries in particle physics is why do we observe so much matter in the universe (basically everything we can see with our telescopes) and observe so little anti-matter IF the universe started with the Big Bang in which the universe was created with a sea of matter and anti-matter and was governed by the laws of particle physics in the early universe.
Basically, up till these very new results (with the exception of the B_s results discovered at Fermilab) there was no experimental evidence that matter and anti-matter behaved differently in any way significant enough to account for the HUGE difference in the abundance of matter over anti-matter that we see in the universe. However, this new result is a big clue along that path showing a very significant difference between the symmetric theory known as the Standard Model and what we observe experimentally.
Now the D0 experiment had to use some really sophisticated techniques to do this experiment and using aspects of their experiment that CDF (its sister experiment at the Tevatron and my home) is not capable of doing.
So what does this mean...could mean a lot of different things. But I'm a big fan of making a measurement and letting it speak for itself. So here is what we can say, this is the first statistically significant evidence that the Standard Model gets the CP violation wrong, Fermilab/D0 were the first to get there, and there is evidence that our Standard Model isn't the whole story and we need to keep looking because the new physics we have been searching for to explain the universe is right around the corner!

Great Physics Article

I found this really great article on Physics.org titled


THE TOP 4 BONKERS THINGS ABOUT THE UNIVERSE

It is a really fun read and raises an interesting question about our universe and the possible histories.

Basically, using some of the ideas of the inflationary model of the Big Bang and certain interpretations of Quantum Mechanics the article posits what I think could be called a "many worlds" approach to the understanding of our universe and history.

Great find for today!

Some follow-up reading about the multi-verse

Elvis is alive and kicking... in a parallel universe 

Parallel worlds

 

What did Santa bring the world of particle physics?

In short, Santa has brought the world of particle physics a huge hint and a leveling pain. The CDMS experiment (a direct dark matter detection group) has just published their latest results and the verdict is....WE CAN'T SAY ANYTHING!!!

As you can see from above the results of their search show two events in the signal region...and two more events so damn close you could sneeze them into the signal region. What does it mean?

Well with an expected background of +/- 0.8 events it means it isn't statistically significant enought to say anything.

It should be noted that in their previous results they had roughly the same background but had to report 0 events. So going from 0 to 2 events after adding another year of data is important...but in principal could be a statistical fluctuation.

So what is direct dark matter detection?

In a nut shell the argument goes like this...if dark matter is as pervasive in the universe as we believe then our planet, our solar system, and our galaxy is swimming in a sea of dark matter. However, this dark matter is very weakly interacting but very massive (called W.I.M.P.S., Weakly Interacting Massive ParticleS) so we can observe its existence indirectly by looking at how it interacts gravitationally.

That being said, even if the stuff doesn't interact with ordinary matter that much, if we but a whole bunch of dense material in a place where nothing else can interact with it and keep it very cold so it isn't vibrating around thermally. Then in a very rare case when one of the dark matter particles that is zipping through our planet hits some of the dense material we should be able to observe it. That is what the detectors at CDMS do.

They are very dense materials kept at near absolute zero at the bottom of a huge mine in the northern part of the U.S. Often dubbed the "Low Background Frontier" they are extremely sensitive and hold the best chance for finding dark matter directly.

With the tantalizing results of 2009 I'm sure they will be carefully and feverishly taking data in 2010 to try to beat the LHC in direct detection of dark matter

So could it be that Santa has brought us some direct detection of Dark Matter and solved a great puzzle in physics? Stay tuned in 2010!

Awesome Accelerator Book Online

Useful Accelerator Book that Google brings to me FREE

This is (in-part) related to my research and was put together by some giants in the field of High Energy Accelerators. So I share with everyone!
The link to it can be found here

1st 2.36 TeV Collision Observed at CERN

While circulating 1.18 TeV proton beams around the LHC in the beginning stages of tests of the new accelerator the ATLAS experiment (one of two major multipurpose detectors designed to look for collisions) observed a candidate event that could prove to be the first major new collision at the High Energy Frontier.

While seeing only one event in a detector that happened to have its magnet off (hence why all the tracks look straight and make particle identification impossible) isn't enough to triumph the end of the era of the Tevatron (Fermilab's Particle Accelerator) but it does bring us one step closer to the new era of really high energy physics!

Exciting Times in the world of particle physics!

Strange ways we can change a life

So a theme I've often thought about post-living in the Neighborhood is the strange ways our interactions can change each others lives.
There is no doubt in my mind that the funny interaction I had with the many gifted and special people from the Neighborhood changed my perspective on life, goals, what matters, and how to conduct my behavior. Likewise, I have been told by a few of the people that the valued time and experiences we shared together really did change their lives as well.
This idea was recently solidified for me in an off-hand conversation I had with a friend on Facebook about a week ago. We had been friends in high school but by no means close. Often we would share in a deep discussion or be at the same event at the same time...but often did run in different circles. I hadn't spoke with my friend Matt for probably 4 years and found out through Facebook that he was pursuing a PhD in Mathematics.

Turns out that in high school I had been reading a book by John Gribbon called In Search of Schrodinger's Cat. I was fascinated by the book and it was a great introduction into the realm of modern physics. Since you can't tread into the world of Quantum Mechanics without getting sucked into a philosophical discussion on the nature of reality I shared this book with my friend Matt. From the conversation I'll post below he credits this chance encounter with a book and a discussion with a friend into starting him down the road that has lead him to his career in mathematics.
Obviously there is more to the story and one doesn't go get a degree in mathematics because of one book...but I thought this story was a nice reminder to SHARE YOUR PASSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS.

Matthew
I started reading Shankar's quantum mechanics textbook

Jonathan
How do you like it?

Matthew
Not too far yet, but it's well written
Dirac's notation for linear algebra is pretty amazingly creative though

Jonathan
certainly...Shankar goes in a neat direction that keeps most of the book accessible throughout, even if it is your first go at Quantum Mechanics...I used it as a supplement book during my QM II course a few years back

Matthew
it's been a while since i dealt with any real physics, so i think the second chapter may be tough going for me

Jonathan
Why did you pick up Shankar?

Matthew
iv'e fogotten alot of my E&M I think
I started reading Dirac
The internet told me i may be better off with shankar

Jonathan
That is probably true...are you trying to learn to DO Quantum mechanics or understand QM?

Matthew
understand
though i;; probably do the excersizes in shankar for amusement

Jonathan
I don't even know if I'd waste my time with Shankar then...starting with Feynmann and his work "6 easy and not so Easy pieces" as well as some essays on QM might get you there quicker...then maybe use Shankar as a check of understanding

Matthew
well ive read QED a cople times, how that book complare?
i mean, i want to understand it, not "understand" it
ie. i want math in my quantum mechanics

Jonathan
ummm...it is close together...if you can follow QED and you want to get some math Feynmann is the way to go...then maybe go to Griffiths "Intro to Quantum Mechanics" I used that in undergrad and it was an awesome bridge between words and math

Matthew
ok, ill look at that in the library tomorrow

Jonathan
nice to hear from you and it sounds like you are keeping up the deep thoughts...that is awesome

Matthew
yah
actually, you gave me a book in high school
like schrodengers cat or something
that one thing probably has alot to do with me becoming a mathematician actaully
so thanks ,i was origionally gonna study physics but found out in college that i was really good at math

Jonathan
that is too cool...glad I could help someone along their path in life

Matthew
well we all do what we can

You never know who is listening...what they will take away from it...or where it will lead. Certainly, my exposure in the neighborhood and the direction and personality it placed in me as a human being helped in the meeting of my future wife. At the very least these people introduced me to soccer, which got me to play on an intramural team, which Heather was a part of, and therefore we became acquainted. Who knows if the passion for this sport was kept away from me would I've ever met her?
So, share your thoughts...they lead to amazing places!